


decode

by himemiyaa



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Crossover, F/F, im not even sorry, twilight saga - Freeform, yep twilight like the vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 14:19:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/himemiyaa/pseuds/himemiyaa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>wherein rose lalonde moves to forks, meets a mysterious (but hot) babe, and quickly becomes obsessed with her like the fucking weirdo that she is</p>
            </blockquote>





	decode

                                     As stories begin so often, this story begins with the new girl in town.

                                     Though it cannot be said that the move to Forks was anything dramatic – her mother’s job moved there, and it wasn’t as if she had any friends in New York anyway – Rose Lalonde was less than pleased to arrive in a small house with a leaky-roofed kitchen and no foyer at all. She was no more impressed by the small high school that seemed to cater to the deeply uninteresting and had an absolutely catastrophic amount of stupid boys to bother her.

                                     Rose was not unattractive. Her hair was soft and blonde, her body was soft and curvy, and although she was shorter than average it was not abnormal. On her first day at Forks High she received no less than three detentions for spitting on boys’ shoes, one for cursing a boy out, and five for staring at them until they began to cry in fear. (This was not her record, and frankly, disappointed her.) There were a few who were less outright sleazy than the others, and these ones she permitted to follow her around, carry her books. She was not entirely sure of their names. It was amazing, really, the consistency between states. The same groups of people existed everywhere. Of the two boys, one was goofy, with glasses and messy hair. The other wore sunglasses inside. Then of course, a perky student council girl had been told to lead her around, which for some reason meant to her _Rose Lalonde is my new best friend and she will love to hear about my dog while I show her the cafeteria._

                                     “I’m a cat person,” Rose replied bluntly, and dog girl looked slightly crestfallen, as if about to cease her blathering. She did not.

                                     And so it went for her first three days of school. She paid no one any mind and walked with her nose in the air and her boots thudding heavily on the old floors of Forks High. She did not raise her hand nor participate in gym class save to give the ‘coach’ a look that read silently as “No.”

                                     On the fourth day of school, a tall girl with wild black hair cropped to the nape of her neck bumped into Rose. Purple bruises blossomed nearly immediately over her arm and collarbone. Rose decided that this girl was the enemy.  While she walked away Rose took note of several things.

  1. She dressed namely in black with a trench coat covering her long arms.
  2. She ignored everyone around her, but clearly took note of their positions, as she gracefully avoided each and every person in the crowded hallway – which, Rose assumed, meant the attack had been purposeful.
  3. She was not particularly muscular, even a little skinny, and though she had broad shoulders she did _not_ look like she should have hit so hard.



                                     At lunch she sat alone until dog girl – whose name, Rose discovered, was Jade – sat down next to her. Holding back a deep sigh, she flipped through the pages of a novel in a half-hearted attempt at blissful ignorance. At some point Jade gave up and left, causing Rose’s darkly painted lips to twist into a slight smirk, and it was not until someone said her name that she stopped reading.

                                     “Rose.”

                                     Looking up she was greeted by no one but her nemesis from the hallway, and she was utterly taken aback by the girl’s beauty. Though she was hardly statuesque with a large nose and round cheeks, her eyes were an unreal shade of green, and her dark skin looked smoother than glass, as if she had never even heard of blemishes.

                                     “Rose, you dropped your apple.”

                                     Rose shook herself from her reverie and snatched the fruit from the girl’s hand (which, upon brushing, she felt no electric spark to tell her she was in love, but an icy chill that spread through her blood and bones quickly and did not fade). “Thank you,” she said coolly, shoving the apple into her bag indelicately and shutting her book without looking at the page number, which she silently cursed herself for.

                                     “I’m Kanaya,” the girl said, and her voice was sharp and soft all at once; a razorblade hidden in a pillow, a butcher knife in the hands of a sweet young girl. The chill in Rose’s spine got colder. “Welcome to Forks.” And then she left. Rose wrinkled her nose and pulled her cardigan closer around herself to ward off the chill, which did not leave for the rest of the day, even when she crawled into her bed and pulled the covers up over her head and wept bitterly into a pillow to keep out the sound of her mother’s drunken shouting.

* * *

                                     Rose’s first period class was biology, and she had already resigned herself to loathing it before Kanaya walked in. She wrinkled her nose again and stared pointedly out the window as the tall girl, for some reason, decided to sit next to her.

                                     “I usually take the window seat.”

                                     “…Oh.” It had not occurred to Rose that Kanaya had attended Forks before her arrival – nor, really, that anyone else had, and that the school had not materialized out of nothing to give her something to do. “Should I get up?”

                                     “It’s fine.” Kanaya’s voice was terse, considerably less friendly than it had been when returning Rose’s apple. The teacher droned on and both girls ignored him, Rose staring out towards the horizon and Kanaya disinterestedly filing her nails. It was not until he set a microscope and a slide on their desk that they looked up. Kanaya’s nostrils flared and her eyes darted around. Rose picked up the slide and examined the label.

                                     “Human blood,” she said calmly, and placed it on the slide, and as she spoke Kanaya swept out of the room with a swish of her black coat. Rose blinked, and so did the teacher, who nodded towards the door. She sighed and slumped on her way out. “Kanaya?”

                                     Kanaya was not in the hallway, so Rose stepped into the nearest bathroom and found her hunched over a sink shivering. Rose was surprised to feel a short shock of pity and even worry for the girl, though she quickly pushed it to the back of her mind as she walked over. She tapped Kanaya on the shoulder and received no response but a light groan. “Go away.”

                                     And so she did.

* * *

                                     “Jade. Tell me what you know about that Kanaya girl.” Rose stared across the quad at her. Thus far she had learned that her full name was Kanaya Maryam Cullen, and she had two brothers and two sisters, all of whom were adopted and seemed to be dating in some weird pseudo-incestuous fashion. She tapped her foot impatiently while she waited for a response.

                                     “Well…I don’t know that much, but I guess it depends on what exactly you want to know about her!” Rose groaned slightly at her response and shrugged.

 

                                     “I don’t know. What’s she like. Why did she miss, like, four days of school. Does she do that often. Is she rude. Why does blood make her sick. Absolutely anything you know, I want to know.”

                                     “She’s really quiet and keeps to herself, mostly. The only people I ever see her talking to are her family at lunch – um, Karkat, the chubby one, Terezi, the little Asian one, the one who looks like he’s always in pain is Sollux, and then the one who never stops smiling is…Aradia. It’s so weird, they’re like, all _together._ ”

                                     “...Together.” Rose tapped the side of her apple and slipped it into her bag before standing. “I’m going to the library. I’ll see you in Calc.” She left without another word and made herself comfortable at one of five computers at Forks High, leaning back in a creaky chair as she waited for the dismally slow internet to load one damn Google search. She hadn’t found anything the night before but she hadn’t known the family names – now it looked like they had moved from Alaska recently, though she could find nothing about them before that.

                                     In bed that night she tossed and turned. The bruises on her arm and side ached. She dreamt of sitting underneath an apple tree, and watching the Cullens pass by in the distance, arm in arm, except for Kanaya, who trailed behind.

* * *

                                     It had rained hard during math class and was still sprinkling when the last bell rang and Rose went to the parking lot. Her mother had graciously given her permission to use the car for getting to and from school, seeing as she was working nights, and Rose was digging through her bag for her keys when she heard the skids of rubber on wet asphalt. Shouting blossomed around her and startled her, and she looked around wide-eyed as a truck veered towards her and prepared to flatten her. This was the end. She crouched down and held her arms over her head in shock, and when the crunch of metal came she whimpered softly and felt tears leaking slowly from her eyes.

                                     She looked up.

                                     She wasn’t dead.

                                     She wasn’t dead?

                                     Rose shook and shivered as someone lifted her up and sat her on the hood of her car. She curled up with her knees to her chest and stared at her savior, more than mildly shocked to see a black trenchcoat and dusky hands with immaculately manicured nails. With wide eyes she looked up, and there she was – Kanaya Cullen, speaking hurriedly into her phone, and staring at Rose with stormy green eyes. There were people crowding around the two cars, pulling people out of the wreckage (which was, Rose noticed, rather severe on the other vehicle- much less so on hers, which sported only a dent) and weeping. She saw a boy from the grade above her whose name she didn’t know clamber out of the wreck with his head bleeding profusely, his glasses knocked askew and glass embedded in his cheek. The sight of it, though she was no stranger to gory photos, nauseated her, and she buried her face in her knees, unmoving until she felt herself lifted again, this time onto a stretcher. She was aware on the perimeter of her senses that she was speaking. She heard herself repeating “I’m okay. I’m fine. I’m fine. I don’t need the hospital” over and over, heard her voice begin to break with tears and hoarseness as the ambulance doors closed and someone put a blanket over her.

                                     She was wide awake as they brought her into the E.R., sitting her down on a bed with curtains around it. There was no one there but her so she brought the sheets up to her chin like she always did as a little girl when she was afraid and Mom was nowhere to be found. With her sheets up so high no monsters would think she was a little girl, because little girls had bodies, and she was just a floating head, so they’d think she was one of them. She knew it was silly, but the scratchy hospital linen against her throat made her feel safer, somehow. Eventually she fell asleep, shaking and twitching, with the blanket clutched tightly in her fists to make sure it would not stop shielding her.

* * *

                                     Rose’s injuries were minor so she went back to school the next day with her wrist in a splint and minor stitches in her fingers and legs. She did not speak to anyone and kept her eyes on the ground, at least, until she saw her feet coming close to a pair of immobile Docs. She looked up and was unsurprised to be greeted by Kanaya’s dark stare.

                                     “Hi.”

                                     “Hey.”

                                     They stared at each other for a moment, Kanaya’s staring as hard to read as ever.

                                     “How did you do that?”

                                     “Do what?”

                                     Rose sneered. “You know exactly what I mean, Cullen. You were on the other side of the parking lot.” Kanaya’s eyes darted to the side towards her siblings, and Rose clenched her jaw. “You’re a very strange girl and I want answers. And given how many aspects of said strangeness seem to revolve around me, I think I deserve them.”

                                     “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

                                     “You were on the other side of the parking lot.”

                                     “Um. No. I was, I was standing right next to you.” Rose groaned and wrapped her fingers in the lapel of Kanaya’s coat, on her tiptoes to see her face more clearly, which to her delight made Kanaya gasp softly in surprise. Kanaya clenched her jaw and looked over her shoulder at her siblings, all of whom looked absolutely ready to pounce and rip Rose limb from limb. She sighed. “It was an adrenaline rush. They happen all the time.”

                                     Rose shook her head again as Kanaya pried her fingers out of the coat (Rose noticed that she was wearing gloves, but that there was still a chill through the fabric) and walked away. The other Cullens mobbed around her and Rose could barely make out one of them berating Kanaya for carelessness and putting them all in danger. Rose clenched her jaw tighter and stormed her way through school, resolving to find out what the actual fuck Kanaya Cullen wanted. She knew one thing, though. No other person had ever held her interest so. She spent hours with her nose in books on local legends, having heard some Jake kid mention that the local native population did _not_ like the Cullens, to the extent that they weren’t permitted on the beaches near the reservation, researching the history and geography of Forks and absolutely anything relating to the Cullens she could find. She fell asleep typing up notes that night, and dreamed again about the Cullens walking hand in hand. Kanaya took longer to catch up this time, and when she finally appeared, she was holding hands with a short feminine shadow, the sight of which made Rose feverishly angry.

* * *

                                     The one positive Rose could identify in Forks was the trees. In New York it had been so hard to find more than one tree in an area, and then they seemed sickly from the smog and city life. In Forks there were bushy evergreens and oaks with branches that seemed made for climbing. Though with her sprained wrist she could hardly reach the higher branches, there were a few small nooks near her house that made lovely reading spaces. She was almost entirely certain, now, that Kanaya Cullen was certainly not human (the cold skin, the panic reaction to blood, the absurd strength it must have taken to cause that wreck and be entirely unharmed – hell, she even looked just a little bit off) and with a growing fear in the pit of her stomach she debated whether or not to tell the girl. She had no problem exposing secrets, of course, but when one intends to tell a carnivorous beast that one knows of its bloodlust, it’s a different battle. There was a gust of wind and the book was knocked out of her hands. She looked around with wide eyes, then bit down on her lip and cleared her throat.              

                                     “Is that you, Cullen?”

                                     There was silence in the forest until Rose let herself down from the tree and pulled out a pocket knife, which she flicked open and pressed delicately to her wrist. “I know it is,” she said with a voice so saccharine it could kill. “And I know how to make you come out, if you don’t do it on your own.”

                                     Immediately the trees parted and Kanaya stepped out, wide eyed herself and with her arms held in surrender. “Please put that down.” Rose scoffed and slipped the knife back into her pocket, crossing her arms over her chest. “You caught me. I was following you.”

                                     “And what else?”

                                     “What do you mean what else?” Rose snorted derisively and pulled the knife back out. “Stop it! What in the world are you trying to accomplish?” Rose watched her closely and saw her nostrils flaring as she took in deep breaths of pine air.

                                     “I know what you are, Kanaya.”

                                     “Look, we’ve established that I’m kind of stalking you, obviously you know.”

                                     “Do you think I’m that stupid? I know _what_ you are.”

                                     “It’s pretty shitty to refer to someone as a what because of their orientation, you know.”

                                     “What? No, shut up, this is _hardly_ about- stop derailing me. You’re not human.”

                                     “That’s homophobic.”

                                     “Shut _up_ , I’m literally not talking about that at all. I’m trying to create a dramatic buildup to the reveal that you’re a vampire.” Silence enveloped the clearing again as the girls stared at each other, neither of them breaking eye contact or moving. Rose raised an eyebrow and waited for the girl’s rebuttal.

                                     “I’m way too dark to be a vampire. Vampires are pale. Can you just admit you have a problem?”

                                     Rose groaned over her speaking and walked right up to her, looking Kanaya dead in the eyes and again wrapping her fingers in the other’s coat. “Kanaya Maryam Cullen,” she growled, “Do not presume to know me. In no world am I comparing your sexuality to your necrotic state. Besides it being stupid and irrelevant, I have absolutely no reason to. _I’m_ queer.”

                                     Kanaya hesitated, and then sighed dejectedly. “Fine. You caught me. Bluh, bluh. I vant to suck your blood.”

                                     Rose stared at her. Kanaya stared back.

                                     When their lips met it was a sensation not unlike ice cubes being thrown into a hot frying pan. Kanaya’s lips were ice cold and made Rose shiver as she wrapped her arms around the taller girl, and Kanaya groaned softly as she felt the blood pulse through Rose’s skin. It would be so easy to just sink her teeth in and-

                                     Rose grunted as she was shoved to the ground by a fuming Kanaya. She looked up in confusion and pain, and it was the most emotion Kanaya had seen on the girl’s face. “You- you should be afraid of me, Rose,” she whispered, and began to back away. Rose threw a nearby rock at her shin. “Ow.”

                                     “Don’t you dare turn this into some shitty young adult romance novel.”

                                     “I’m a monster.”

                                     “Aren’t we all?”

                                     “That’s not funny.”

                                     “Kiss me again.” She did. The fervor was less intense the second time, and they kissed longer. Rose could taste Kanaya’s lipstick. It wasn’t flavored, it was just lipstick, tasteless and colorful, and she loved it. Kanaya kept her hands stiffly at her sides with her fists clenched, nails digging into her own skin hard enough that a human would be bleeding. It was hard not to focus on Rose’s blood coursing through her body, but the longer they kissed the more things she noticed – she could taste gum that Rose had been chewing earlier, leaving her mouth surprisingly bubblegum-flavored, though she seemed hardly the type to enjoy such childish candy. Her fingers were feather-soft against the back of Kanaya’s neck- in fact, all of Rose was soft, delightfully so, and yet she felt much less vulnerable than most humans did, as if under the flesh was an iron skeleton capable of defending itself from monsters. From her. Very gently, she placed her arms around Rose’s waist, and Rose broke the kiss to push Kanaya’s hair behind her ears. “Was that so bad?”

                                     Kanaya smiled sheepishly and rested her forehead against Rose’s. “No. But I _am_ a dangerous, bloodthirsty beast.”

                                     “Yes, well, too bad. You’re a dangerous, bloodthirsty beast who happens to be my girlfriend. …If that’s ok.”

                                     “That’s definitely ok.”


End file.
